1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a fixing structure for an escutcheon portion of a car stereo, car radio, etc., and more particularly to a fixing structure for fitting an outer escutcheon to an instrument panel in front of an escutcheon body.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As widely known, a car stereo or a car radio is mounted in such a manner that openings are formed on an instrument panel of a car so as to correspond to various operating knobs, a cassette tape loading opening and/or a frequency indicator arranged on the front face of escutcheon body of the car stereo or car radio, and the car stereo or car radio is fitted in the openings from the interior of the instrument panel. Thereafter, an outer escutcheon is fitted from the outside of the instrument panel to conceal edges of the openings and setting screws for improving the appearance of the car stereo or radio. Since the outer escutcheon is employed to improve the appearance of the car stereo or radio, it is desirable to avoid employment screws or nails for fitting the outer escutcheon. By this reason, in general, a fixing member is provided on the escutcheon body side for allowing the outer escutcheon to engage therewith. The Assignee of the present invention has proposed, for example, in Japanese UM Publication No. 51-26005 (1976), an outer escutcheon fixing method in which a channel-shaped fixing member having horizontal engaging tip ends each formed with a slit is used as the fixing member and the outer escutcheon has a hole slightly smaller than the horizontal engaging ends of the channel-shaped fixing members and corresponding to the channel-shaped member, so as to fix the outer escutcheon through resilient engagement effected by the slits of the horizontal fixing members. However, since the resiliency is exerted by the slits formed on the fixing members in this conventional fixing structure, the horizontal engaging portion must have a length sufficient to provide the aforesaid effect and the thickness of the outer escutcheon must be large accordingly. In this connection, it is to be noted that the outer escutcheon is preferably flat to eliminate possible injury due to a traffic accident, but the conventional structure cannot satisfy this requirement. In addition, when there are variances in widths of the horizontal engaging portions, the side portions of the horizontal engaging portion made of metal sheet are possibly subject to a large force and deformed thereby. This prevents firm engagement and fixing of the outer escutcheon.